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Causality and Becoming: Scotistic Reflections Abstract Causality and Becoming: Scotistic Reflections Liran Shia Gordon / The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Abstract: Becoming is a process in which a thing moves from one state to another. In Section 1, the study will elaborate on the discussion of the Aristotelian causes taken broadly, primarily focusing on the relation between efficient and final causes. In Section 2, the study discusses the implications of Scotus’s conception of contingency and freedom, as they are reflected in the relation of the future to the past, for the efficient and final causalities. Similarly in Section 3 an examination of Scotus’s conception of matter is conducted. Based on the ideas established in these sections, the study attempts to present an initial Scotistic view of becoming. Becoming is a process in which a thing moves from one state to another. Following Aristotle, the Scholastics spoke of four types of causes that describe the process of becoming: material, formal, efficient, and final.1 The material cause refers to what the thing is made of while the formal produces what is formed, the role of efficient causality is to produce transformations in matter or move things from their initial place to another, and final causality pertains to an end.2 In Section 1, the study will elaborate on the discussion of the Aristotelian causes taken broadly, primarily focusing on the relation between efficient and final causes. In Section 2, the study discusses the implications of Scotus’s conception of contingency and freedom, as they are reflected in the relation of the future to the past, for the efficient and final causalities. Similarly in Section 3 an examination of Scotus’s conception of matter is conducted. Based on the ideas established in Abbreviations: Lect. = Ioannis Duns Scoti, Lectura: Prologue, I-Iii, ed. Commissio Scotistica, vol. XVII-XXI, Opera Omnia (Città del Vaticano: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, XVII:1966, XVIII:1982, XIX:1993, XX:2003, XXI:2004). Ord. = Ordinatio, Prologue, I-Iv, ed. Commissio Scotistica, vol. I-XIV, Opera Omnia (Città del Vaticano: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, I:1950, II:1950, III:1954, IV:1956, V:1959, VI:1963, VII:1973, VIII:2001, IX:2006, X:2007, XI:2008, XII:2010, XIII:2011, XIV:2013). Quodl. = Quaestiones Quodlibetales [God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions (1975)], trans. Felix Alluntis and Allan Wolter, vol. 12, Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis Ordinis Minorum Opera Omnia (Lyons: Wadding, 1639). QM. = Quaestiones Super Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Libri I–Ix, vol. 3-4, Opera Philosophica (Franciscan Institute Publ. St. Bonaventure University, 1997). Rep. I-A = John Duns Scot, Reportatio I-a, Prologue, D. 1-48: Latin Text and English Translation, trans. Allan B. Wolter and O. V. Bychkov, vol. 1-2(St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2004, 2008). Rep. IV-A = John Duns Scotus, The Report of the Paris Lecture, Reportatio Iv-A(Franciscan Institute Publications, 2016). 1 For further discussion of the Aristotelian and Medieval discussion of causes, and the difference between them, see Jakob Leth Fink, "Introduction," in Suárez on Aristotelian Causality(Brill, 2015), 6-17. 2 Following Aristotle, Aquinas defines final causality in the following way: ‘And since, as Aristotle says in book 2 of the Metaphysics, everything that acts, acts only by intending something, there must be some fourth thing: namely, that which is intended by that which is acting. And this is said to be the end’. Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae 3.351, in Opuscula philosophica, ed. R.M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome, 1954), 123. 1 these sections, the study attempts to present an initial Scotistic view of becoming. Through an integration of key Scotistic conclusions from previous elaborations, this study will primarily deal with extrinsic causes and will not present an exhaustive discussion of Scotus’s understanding of causality, e.g., the distinction between essential and accidental causes.3 §1 Preliminary Consideration of Causality Though the four causes doctrine has had a long and varied history, its interpreters, for example Aquinas and Suarez, did not stray much from the spirit of Aristotle’s works. As the Scholastics of the late 13th century were well acquainted with the thought of Aristotle, they used the four causes as an integral part of their discussions. In contrast to Suarez who devoted disputations 12- 27 to a discussion of causality, and in particular the four causes (13-14 material causality, 15-16 formal causality, 17-22 efficient causality and 23-24 final causality), Duns Scotus uses the four causes throughout his investigations as an integral part of his examinations. As this study does not intend to present a detailed discussion of Scotus’s conception of the four causes doctrine but rather to examine how conclusions from previous elaborations shed new light on the understanding of causality and the question of becoming, the following does not rely solely on Scotus’s statements but also bases itself on those of his contemporaries, such as Thomas Aquinas. In addition, Scotus’s statements will be used to focus on points that are relevant for our examination, particularly on our attempt to develop new insights. Aquinas explains that while material and formal causes ‘are called “intrinsic” to the thing, because they are parts constituting the thing’, final and efficient causes ‘are called “extrinsic” because they are outside the thing’.4 Whereas all the four causes bring about change, only the efficient cause addresses how the change takes place: The material cause is responsible for change in that it is the item that persists through and underlies the change; the formal cause is the characteristic which the changing thing comes to possess; and the final cause is that for the sake of which the change occurs. But 3 A discussion on this matter can be found in Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate Studies in the History of Philosophical Theology (Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 17-28. 4 Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae 3.352, in Opuscula philosophica, ed. R.M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome, 1954), 124. See also Suarez’s Metaphysical Disputations 17.1.6. 2 in addition to these three, something more is needed to account for how the change actually comes to take place.5 Whereas the modern mechanistic understanding of efficient causality is concerned with the delivery of motion or momentum from the cause to the effect, the Aristotelian tradition identified efficient causality not solely with the transmitted change but emphasized that what makes an efficient cause a cause is the fact that the change originated from it: it is that from ‘where’ the change begins. In the Physics, Aristotle explains that the ‘where’ of the efficient cause is both a ‘where the origin of the motion [comes] from,’6 that designates the location where the change begins, as well as, and even more importantly, the source of origination or beginning of the motion.7 By holding that efficient causality is that from where the motion of a change begins, efficient causality must be understood from the point of view of agency, not simply as transmitting motion, as the mechanistic billiard-ball view of the universe understands it, but rather as something that actualizes the motion. This origination of change needs to be understood both insofar as the agency uses instruments to exercise causality and insofar as quantity cannot originate an act of its own volition but requires an agency to actualize the quantity in a certain manner. In the first instrumental respect Scotus explains that “cutting apart” insofar as it is an action does not come from the saw. For if cutting apart is a locomotion, then the saw does not actively move [anything], but merely is moved passively by the principal agent. … the saw does not of itself possess [the capacity for] cutting apart, but the motion that is imparted by the hand, as well as the cutting apart that follows, are two effects of an agent that acts according to a certain order. … Therefore neither the saw nor the ax acts with efficient causality, but only passively, insofar as each is moved by an agent.8 Instruments are used passively by the agency to bring about the change. In the second respect, because quantity alone cannot effect efficient cause, Scotus explains: 5 Thomas M. Tuozzo, "Aristotle and the Discovery of Efficient Causation," in Efficient Causation: A History, ed. Tad M Schmaltz, Oxford Philosophical Concepts (NY: Oxford, 2014), 25. 6 Aristotle, Physics 243a33-34. 7 Tuozzo, "Aristotle and the Discovery of Efficient Causation," 25. 8 Rep. IV, d. 1, n. 28 3 [A]ctual quantity is not a principle of any action… how does food nourish by its substantive power? … in the food itself there is no efficient cause for growth; rather this is to be found in the living [organism] converting the food.9 Aristotle did not attribute the ‘where’ of origination only to efficient causality. In the same place in the Physics he spoke of the ‘where’ of origination as both efficient and final causalities.10 This dual attribution is an expression of the fact that final and efficient causes cause together and that this co-causation forms a hierarchy in which final causality governs efficient causality. Final causality does not cause in the manner efficient causality causes, i.e., by bringing things into existence but rather ‘the causality of the final cause is to move the efficient cause to act’.11 Scotus thus does not understand the four causes as being distinct from one another but rather as co-causing in an essentially ordered and unified causation: The four kinds of causes are essentially ordered in their causation of one and the same thing. … how then will they [the four causes] produce the same thing if they do not at least cause together? Insofar as they are causing the effect, then, they possess a unity of order.
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